Square’s New Merchant Case is Ugly
Mobile payments company Square introduced a new Merchant Case at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas yesterday and, boy, is it ugly. It’s that oddly-shaped black piece of rubber wrapped around...
View ArticleBranch image capture – Maximizing the initial investment for increased benefits
By Lane Martin, Managing Principal and Priya Gupta, Senior Consultant While the benefits of implementing check image capture in branches are well-known, and the practice itself is a proven business...
View ArticleUnderstanding a Bitcoin advocate
After an eventful last year, 2014 is starting with more debate and conversations around Bitcoin. It is often said that understanding Bitcoin is too technical for the average user (and at core it is,...
View ArticleVenmo Marketing Goes Old School in New York
Venmo may have cutting-edge, person-to-person payments technology, but its latest marketing effort is decidedly old school. PayPal-owned Venmo closed out 2013 and open 2014 like it was 1999: plastering...
View ArticleEnter the DEMOvation Challenge to Win a Demo Slot at Bank Innovation 2014
Are you a startup founder looking to break into the world of financial services? Do you know of a company pushing the boundaries of financial innovation? Bank Innovation is holding its first-ever...
View ArticleFirst Brick-and-Mortar Bitcoin Center Opens Down the Block from the NYSE
Think bitcoins are a passing fad? The guys behind the Bitcoin Center NYC sure don’t. On New Years Eve they threw a party to officially open their vast storefront office, located down the block from the...
View ArticlePeer-to-Peer Lending Gets Real With a P2P ATM
Need cash but the bank account’s empty? No problem, try the ATM — the peer-to-peer (P2P) ATM, that is. Crowdfunding and P2P lending have become mainstream concepts. Kickstarter is practically a...
View ArticlePulseWallet Offers a ‘Handy’ New Way to Pay
No cash, no card, no problem. With PulseWallet, all you need to pay is the palm of your hand. Introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show last week and slated to roll out in February, PulseWallet is a...
View Article17 Hottest Trends That Will Drive Banking in 2014
The business of putting together lists of top this-and-that at the end of the year has simply gotten out of hand. No media outlet took the list thing to greater heights than Time, which published the...
View ArticleDwolla’s API Leaders Have Quit
Dwolla, the alternative payments company, has lost the two leaders of its API team. Alexander Taub and Michael Schonfield left Dwolla last Friday to launch Modern Mast. Taub’s title was officially...
View ArticlePrepaidian Aims to Fill the Void Left by Big Banks in Prepaid Affinity Cards
Affinity meets prepaid with Prepaidian, a new venture serving smaller affinity groups. The company launched quietly last year under the leadership of prepaid industry veteran Jim Shanahan and inked its...
View ArticleWisely Gets Wiser with User Data from Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Capital One
Wisely is adding tons of FI transaction data to its vault. The Ann Arbor-based company announced yesterday that it has completed its beta test of adding transaction data from Citigroup, Wells Fargo and...
View ArticleA/B Testing for Banking Apps Has Arrived
If you have dreamed about A/B testing for your banking app, wake up. It’s here. A new company out of Philadelphia called Artisan now allows for on-the-fly — yes, on-the-fly! — A/B app testing. The...
View ArticleVIDEO: Yes, Sex Does, in Fact, Sell for Vodafone Wallet
WARNING: Some of you may find this video inappropriate. Vodafone Wallet is not pulling any punches — or leaving much to the imagination — with this new TV ad for its mobile wallet (ht David Birch). If...
View ArticleThe battle for the POS is the battle for digitization of physical retail
The POS market has recently seen interesting transactions and announcements: First Data acquired Clover end of2013 and launched its Clover Point of Sales in 2014. First Data Quietly Buys Payments...
View ArticleStripe Adding Functionality for ‘Any’ Currency
Stripe, the payments provider for developers, will add robust foreign exchange capabilities, the company’s founder disclosed today. Patrick Collison informed Stripe users today that the company was...
View ArticleThe Bancorp Scores Private-Label Deal With T-Mobile (Oh, and T-Mobile Has 45M...
What will 45 million customers get you? A private-label deal with The Bancorp, apparently. Move over Simple, because starting today T-Mobile, with its 45 million customers (yes, you read that number...
View ArticleFree Bitcoin Processing a Sign of Why Alt-Currency Remains on the Rise
Payment discounts rate may vary, but they are never 0% — except if bitcoins are involved. Cryptopay, a London-based payments company, is now offering free processing for payments using bitcoin for two...
View ArticlePayPal Processed $27 Billion in Mobile Payments in 2013
PayPal processed $27 billion in mobile payments in 2013, out of a total of the $180 billion of total payments the company handled. And the pace of mobile payments quickened as the year progressed: $8.8...
View ArticleIs the T-Mobile-Isis Marriage in Jeopardy?
Will T-Mobile bail out of the Isis mobile wallet program now that it has launched Mobile Money by T-Mobile? That’s the question being asked by industry observers in the wake of T-Mobile’s announcement...
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